The River

The sinuous river of your childhood. Do you remember how it slid between your young legs before winding away, making its lively and bubbly sounds. You would have made it light-headed with your games and screams. When you lingered late in the afternoon after school, and you sat on its border, feet splashing in the water, obstructing the current, and teased it with a twig. As if it had been a person, a mother perhaps. And when you jumped in, swam along with it, holding its elusive body between your arms and legs, and you had become children of the river.